Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 158, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1910 — THE BUCK’S TRIUMPH BLOW TO FIGHT FANS [ARTICLE]

THE BUCK’S TRIUMPH BLOW TO FIGHT FANS

Jeffries Knocked Out in the Fifteenth Round, While Johnson Leaves the Ring Without a Mark.

JEFFRIES NEVER DANGEROUS Johnson Proves Fast and Clever, While Former Champion Was Sluggish In Mlxups—Battle One-Sided. Financial and Other Results of Big Mill. Johnson’s share $70,600 Jeffries’ share 50,400 Johnson’s share pictures 50,000 Jeffries’ share pictures 66,666 Total for Johnson... 120,400 Total for Jeffries 117,066 Paid attendance 250,000 Number present 20,000 Length of fight .* 15 rounds Terminated by Knockout

Reno, Nev., July 4.—-John Arthur Johnson, a Texas negro, the son of an American slave, tonight is the first and undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.

James J. Jeffries, .of California, winner of twenty-two championship fights, the man who never was brought to his knees before by a blow, tonight passed into history as a broken idol. He met utter defeat at the hands of the black champion.

While Jeffries was not actually counted out, he was saved only from this crowning humiliation by his friends pleading with Johnson not to hit the fallen man again, and the towel was brought into the ring from his corner. At the end of the fifteenth round Referee Tex Rickard raised the black arm, and the great crowd filed out, glum and silent. Jeffries was dragged to his corner, bleeding from the nose and mouth a dozen cuts on the face. He had a black, closed eye and swollen features, and he held his head in his hands dazed and incoherent. Johnson walked out of the ring without a mark on his body, except a slight cut oni his lip, which was the opening of a wound received in training. Ring experts agree that it was not even a championship fight. Jeffries had a chance in the second round perhaps, but after the sixth it was plain that he was weakened and outclassed at every point, and after the eleventh round it was hopeless. It was the greatest demonstration the ring has ever seen of the failure of a fighter to “come back” after years of retirement. The youth and science of the black man made Jeffries look like a green man. Jeffries was like a log. Johnson was like a black panther, beautiful in his alertness and strength. Jeffries fought by instinct, it seemed, showing his gameness and his fighting

heart in every round, but he was only the shell of his old self. The old power to take a terrible beating and bore in utftil he landed the knockout blow was gone. After the third round Johnson treated his opponent almost as a joke. He smiled and blocked playfully, warding off the bear-like rushes of Jeffries with a marvelous science, not tucking a blow under his arm, again plucking it out of the air as a man stops a base ball. The end was swift and terrible. It looked as though Johnson had been holding himself under cover all the rest of the time and now that he had measured Jeffries in all his weakness he had determined to stop it quickly. Jeffries had lost the power of defense. A series of right and left upper cuts, delivered at will, sent him staggering to the ropes. He turned and fought back by instinct, as though he was dying hard. With the exception of a few last rounds, the fight was tame. Jeffries did not have the power in his punch to hurt Johnson, after he had received blow after blow on the jaw, and his vital power was ebbing. But even before this stage came, Jeffries could not reach the black. The blows, almost all of them, landed with all the speed taken out of them. It was like hitting a punching bag. The Jeffries’ crouch was in evidence at times, but during most of the fight Jeffries fought standing straight and working with something of his old aggressiveness.

At the beginning of the thirteenth round the experts at ,the ringside passed out the verdict that if Jeff would simply stand and not fight, he might stay the limit. As they came up for the fifteenth -round it was plain to all that Jeffries was in distress. His face was puffed and bleeding from the punishing lefts and rights he had received,, and his movements were languid. He shambled after the elusive negro, sometimes crouching low with his left hand stuck out in front and sometimes standing erect.

Stooping or erect, he was a mark for Johnson’s accurately-driven blows. Johnson simply waited for the big white man to come in and chopped his face to pieces. They came into a clinch after a feeble attempt by Jeffries to land a left-hand blow on the body, and as they broke away Johnson shot his left and right to the jaw like a flash. Jeffries staggered back against the ropes. His defensive power seemed to desert him in an instant. Johnson went at him like a tiger. A rain of lefts and rights delivered at close

quarters sent Jeffries reeling blindly. Another series of short, snappy punches, and the big white giant went down for first time in his ring career. He fell under the top rope, over the lower one, and on to the overhanging edge of the platform. Resting on his haunches and left elbow, Jeffries looked around in a dazed way and got up at the counts of nine.

While he was down Johnson stood almost over him until Rickard waved him back. He stood ready to strike, and when Jeffries arose from his knees dashed in again. Jeffries reeled about, and tried to clinch, but Johnson eluded him, and as the old champion swung around to the south side of the ring he jolted him twice on the jaw. Jeffries sank to his knees, weak and tired, but got up again at the count of nine. It was then that Jeffries’ friends began to call to Rickard to stop the fight. “Stop it, stop it,” they shouted from all sides, “Don’t let him be knocked out.”

Rickard gave no heed to these appeals. Jeffries was helpless now, and as he staggered to a standing position, the negro was waiting for him. Jim Corbett, who too, had gone down before Jeffries’ blows and who had stood in Jeffries’ corner all during this fight telling Johnson what a fool he was and how he was in for the greatest beating of his life, now ran forward with outstretched arms, crying: “Oh, go back; don’t hit him.”

Jeffries painfully raised himself to his feet. His jaws had dropped; his eyes were nearly shut and his face was covered with blood. With trembling legs and yielding arms he tried to put up a defense. But he could not stop a terrific right smash in the jaw, followed by two left hooks. He went down again. A.left and a right left—short, snappy, powerful blows—found their mark on Jeffries’ chin and he went down for the third time. Again he sprawled over the lower ropes, hanging half outside the ring. The timekeeper raised and lowered his arm, tolling off the seconds. He had reached the count of seven when one of Jeffries’ seconds put foot inside the ropes and Rickard walked between the fallen man and the negro champion. Placing his hand on Johnson’s shoplder he declared him the winner. While Jeffries was not counted out, this was merely a technical evasion. It was evident that he could never have got up inside of ten seconds. When the count of seven had been reached it was evident that the white champion had been finished. At least a hundred people broke through the

ropes, and Timekeeper Harting was screened from the ring by the crowd The confusion was so great that no announcement from the ring officials was audible. When Jeffries was lek back to his corner by Corbett, Berger and Jack Jeffries he was still dazed. Johnson stood in the center of ring and received the congratulations of Billy Delaney and his other seconds. As he talked to Delaney, Johnson was breathing absolutely normal. He was not hurt in any way. Sig Hart said to the champion: “Go over and shake hands with the poor old fellow. Jack.” “No, I don’t owe him anything now,” said Johnson.

Later he went to Jeff’s corner, but Corbett and O’Brien waved him away. When he returned to his own corner the crowd in the ring was so dense that the police had to beat them back. The first man to congratulate him in i’is corner was John L. Sullivan. Jeffries was attended by his physician as hesat inhis corner. He sat shaking his head sadly for a few min utes and then was led to his dressing room. Soon afterward he was taken to his camp at Moana Springs. The soothing liquids were applied to the fallen champion’s bruised face, but his heart was something that could not be reached. As sopn as he regained his sense of persons and of the rapidfire events that had pushed him into oblivion, he took his head In his hands and groaned.

“I waß too old to come back,” he said. Cprbett and Joe Choynski and brother Jack and the others were ready to cry, but they united in trying to cheer the defeated man. “It’s all off with you,” Corbett said. “But you did the best you could.” “Cheer up, we’ll go fishing tomorrow,” Frank Gotch, the wrestling champion, said. As seon as the men left the ring the crowd began the destruction of the ring. The ropes were cut into bits, the canvas ripped up and snipped into small pieces, and even the staples that held the canvas were unscrewed and taken as souvenirs. My loan company is still making farm loans at 5 per cent. If you are going to need a loan make application now, as some other companies are already refusing to loan. John A. Dunlap, I. O. O. F. Bldg. Cheapest accident insurance—Dr. Thomas’ Eclectic Oil. Stops the pain and heals the wound. All druggists sell it. Feel languid, weak, run-down? Headache? Stomach “off”?—Just a plain case of lazy liver. Burdock Blood Bitters tones liver and stomach, promotes digestion, purifies the blood.